#52Ancestors - Large Family

                I have spent a long time today, trying to figure out just which large family I was going to write about.  I’ve already written about two of the largest in our families.  But as I was going through my RootsMagic file, one thing kept coming up over and over.  French Canadians.

The John Baptiste & Mary (Talbot) Provost family, circa 1891.

                 My husband’s mother is descended from several French Canadian families.  The families started in Quebec and then all but two of the families went to Kankakee County, Illinois in the mid 1800’s.  (The two that didn’t go to Kankakee County migrated down through New York State).  French Canadians are Catholic (for the most part) and have large families.  Kankakee County filled up quick and soon there was no available land for the young men growing up and needing land to establish their own families.  Starting around 1870 there was another mass migration.  This time they moved from Kankakee County, Illinois to Cloud County, Kansas.  Most of these families were large with eight to fifteen children.  Those children were soon marrying and have large families of their own.  From Cloud County, some of the next generation went to Rooks County, Kansas.  Others moved to Minnesota and South Dakota.  The days of the mass migrations were over.  They moved where they found land, or work, or had other family.   

I didn’t grow up in Cloud County.  I moved here right after high school to attend college and loved it here so much I never went back to my hometown.  I quickly found that everyone was related here.  After I started digging in to my husband’s family tree, the French Canadians grabbed me and I soon learned just why everyone here was related!  I started with just Scott’s ancestors.  As I added in spouses for the children, I began hooking in other families.  I had access to baptism, marriage and death records, so I spent time building families.  I started a separate file in RootsMagic just French Canadians.  On bad days, I would spend quiet time building another family.  I’ve done research for other descendants and never once I have I failed to connect another family into the database somehow.  It seems Cloud County Kansas is one large family!